Life satisfaction and self-employment: a matching approach
Life satisfaction and self-employment: a matching approach
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DOI：
10.1007/s11187-011-9413-9
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发表时间：
2013-05-01
影响因子：
6.4
通讯作者：
Coad, Alex
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Binder, Martin;Coad, Alex
尽管收入较低，但自雇人士对工作的满意度一直较高。但是个体经营者是否也更快乐，对他们的整体生活更满意？高的工作满意度可能会导致他们忽视生活中其他重要的领域，这样令人满意的工作就会挤出其他乐趣，使个人总体上并不比其他人更快乐。此外，选择自营职业往往是为了逃避失业，而不是为了相关的自主权，这似乎是高工作满意度的原因。我们应用匹配估计，使我们能够更好地考虑到上述因素，并构建一个适当的控制组（在平衡协变量方面）。使用BHPS数据集，其中包括一个大的全国代表性的样本的英国民众，我们发现，个人谁从正规就业到自营职业的经验增加生活满意度（长达2年后），而个人从失业到自营职业并不比他们的同行从失业到正规就业更满意。我们认为，这些群体分别对应于“机会”和“必要性”创业。这些研究结果是强大的主观幸福感的不同措施，以及匹配变量的选择，也涉及“模拟混杂因素”的鲁棒性练习。
Despite lower incomes, the self-employed consistently report higher satisfaction with their jobs. But are self-employed individuals also happier, more satisfied with their lives as a whole? High job satisfaction might cause them to neglect other important domains of life, such that the fulfilling job crowds out other pleasures, leaving the individual on the whole not happier than others. Moreover, self-employment is often chosen to escape unemployment, not for the associated autonomy that seems to account for the high job satisfaction. We apply matching estimators that allow us to better take into account the above-mentioned considerations and construct an appropriate control group (in terms of balanced covariates). Using the BHPS dataset that comprises a large nationally representative sample of the British populace, we find that individuals who move from regular employment into self-employment experience an increase in life satisfaction (up to 2 years later), while individuals moving from unemployment to self-employment are not more satisfied than their counterparts moving from unemployment to regular employment. We argue that these groups correspond to "opportunity" and "necessity" entrepreneurship, respectively. These findings are robust with regard to different measures of subjective well-being as well as choice of matching variables, and also robustness exercises involving "simulated confounders".